The Odds on God

Published: October 9, 1994

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AND just in the nick of time. By the time the entire universe is colonized, Mr. Tipler estimates, the Big Bang will be running out of steam, and the universe will begin collapsing into what is sometimes called the "Big Crunch." This, it might seem, would spell doom for any kind of creature, real or artificial. But remember: life is now ubiquitous. It is no longer simply along for the ride. Having filled every nook and cranny of the cosmos, we can control its destiny.

The equations governing the expansion and contraction of the universe are chaotic, Mr. Tipler tells us, making them hypersensitive to the slightest nudge. Using the famous butterfly effect (a flapping of wings in Rio sets off a hurricane in Bangladesh), we can steer the course of the collapse with strategically placed explosions. If the universe contracts faster in some directions than in others, the result will be a vast reservoir of potential energy (in the form of temperature differentials) that can be tapped as we surf the waves of the great implosion.

What do we use the energy for? To bring about the Resurrection. By the time the universe is contracting, Mr. Tipler calculates, it will have enough computing power to perfectly simulate -- to emulate -- every creature that ever existed or could conceivably exist. As the universe continues to collapse to a final singularity of infinite density and infinite temperature (the Omega Point, he calls it, borrowing from the French theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), all creatures great and small can be brought back to life inside computers, along with all their memories.

Even though there is a finite amount of time until the Omega Point -- the final crunch -- is reached, enough energy can be tapped to perform an infinite amount of information processing, Mr. Tipler says. Viewed from outside, the universe would seem finite in duration, but from within, the simulated life forms would have the subjective sense of lasting forever.

There you have it. Resurrection and life everlasting. Since this bounty flows from the Omega Point, we can think of it as God. "The Omega Point loves us," Mr. Tipler writes (precisely defining love by appealing to sociobiological theories of altruism and economic game theory). With its omnipotent computational powers, the Omega Point will create for each of us the best possible world. In fact, Mr. Tipler writes, "it would be possible for each male to be matched not merely with the most beautiful woman in the world, not merely with the most beautiful woman who has ever lived, but to be matched with the most beautiful woman whose existence is logically possible." And vice versa.

All this would be small comfort if the author were simply describing something that might happen if we only had the technological resolve to pull it off. After all, Congress won't even finance the Superconducting Supercollider, whose abandoned tunnels are being considered for use as a commercial mushroom farm. But Mr. Tipler does not simply argue that it is conceivable life could take over the universe and bring about the Resurrection. He says that it is inevitable.

Why? Because life must take these steps in order to survive the Big Crunch and live forever. O.K. But why must life survive? Here the argument depends on Mr. Tipler's version of the strong anthropic principle, which he outlined in the book he wrote with John D. Barrow, "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" (1986): There are an infinite number of possible universes that can conceivably exist, depending on how the knobs were set at the time of the Big Bang. But while all these universes can be said to exist logically, for them to exist physically, Mr. Tipler argues, they must contain observers to behold and appreciate them. Our universe obviously exists, so it must -- by his definition -- behave in a way that sustains life forever.

This rather circular argument might sound about as convincing as the attempts of medieval theologians to deduce the existence of God from first principles. As a reminder that we are to take this as science, not religion, Mr. Tipler declares that his theory has certain testable consequences. To allow for the kind of information processing necessary to sustain the computational Resurrection, such hypothetical particles as the long-sought Higgs boson and the top quark must have certain masses. The Omega Point Theory also predicts that the universe must be found to contain enough mass to collapse eventually and not go on expanding forever, as some cosmologists believe it will.

It's left for Mr. Tipler's fellow cosmologists to evaluate these claims. To make his book as accessible as possible, he has relegated the mathematical proofs of many of his assertions to a 123-page, equation-filled "Appendix for Scientists." It is here that he shows, for example, how an infinite amount of information can be processed in a finite amount of time. To really appreciate this section, Mr. Tipler concedes, one must have the equivalent of at least three Ph.D.'s -- in global general relativity, theoretical particle physics and computer complexity theory. The author has a doctorate in the first of these fields; getting up to speed in the other two, he says, took 15 years. Mr. Tipler sounds like a trustworthy sort, and we can believe that he has done his calculations carefully. But finally we must trust in the wisdom of the high priests.

"THERE is nothing supernatural in the theory," he insists, "and hence there is no appeal, anywhere, to faith." But all of mankind's grand systems are ultimately built on a platform of belief. At some point we must stop calculating and take the Kierkegaardian leap. Even the few who can thoroughly understand the equations are being asked to assume, as a postulate of the theory, that a fundamental feature of the universe is the ability to sustain life forever. What makes Mr. Tipler so very sure?

His book is dedicated to his wife's grandparents, who were killed in the Holocaust. In the first chapter he tells how a visit to a Nazi death camp reinforced his conviction "that there is nothing uglier than extermination."

For a moment the curtains are pulled back and we see what motivates this herculean effort. "We physicists know that a beautiful postulate is more likely to be correct than an ugly one," he writes, taking another leap of faith. "Why not adopt this Postulate of Eternal Life, at least as a working hypothesis?"

Would finding the wrong mass for the Higgs boson or the top quark really overturn so unshakable a conviction? One imagines Mr. Tipler would find a way to tweak a variable here or add a postulate there, as he strains to find a rationale for the one thing he, and all of us, want so desperately to believe.